Nebula

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Big, dirty clumps of dust, gas and plasma; that might sound like something you’d find under your bed, but in fact it’s what makes up nebulae. These light-years-wide clouds are galactic factories drifting across space while baby planets and infant stars spin out of them in their cooling edges.

Smart dudes with really big telescopes have found all sorts of beautiful nebulae scattered across the cosmos. They come in fun shapes like horse heads, crabs or pillars, unlike the things under your bed that come in shapes like dirty socks or crusty tissues.

If you think that’s the weirdest thing in the universe: So-called “dark nebulae" are the Goths of the universe -- clouds of vapor that drift aimlessly and grow so dense in places that they block out all light behind them.